


Imagine

by delicious-irony (deliciousirony)



Series: SPN Writing Prompt Challenge [4]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bar, Fluff, Imaginary Friend, Invisibility, M/M, Supernatural Writing Challenge, Supernatural Writing Challenge March 2016
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-30
Updated: 2016-03-30
Packaged: 2018-08-27 03:52:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8386153
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousirony/pseuds/delicious-irony
Summary: Castiel is stuck in a bar. He doesn't know why, or how, or really all that much about himself. Also, nobody can see him. Almost nobody, that is.





	

**Author's Note:**

> For the March 2016 round of the **[SPN Writing Challenge](http://spnwritingchallenge.tumblr.com)**. The prompt was 'imaginary friend'.
> 
> Come say hello to me on Tumblr at **delicious-irony.tumblr.com**! I tag all my writing with #delicious-irony writes.
> 
>  
> 
> _This hasn’t been beta’ed yet, but a very kind soul has agreed to do so, so hopefully I’ll get around to polishing this in the near future._  
> 

Castiel looked around the dimly lit room. All the stools at the bar were occupied, as were the more private booths along the walls. He had long given up trying to claim one of them for himself during evenings and now spent the rush hour tucked away in a corner behind the bar, occasionally handing Meg whatever she was looking for, provided nobody was looking. In his ten years of involuntary entrapment in _Purgatory_ , he had had ample time to familiarise himself with every single cocktail ever mixed. It wasn’t like he could leave the bar. Or amuse himself with anything else, except maybe the piano on the small stage towards the back of the room. 

Castiel liked to think that he would have enjoyed learning another instrument, but those tended to get taken back home by the musicians who brought them. The piano, obviously, stayed, but rarely did any notes. So for years, Castiel had been stuck playing the same couple of songs he remembered. When, to their utter shock (Castiel) and grudging amazement (Meg), Meg had discovered Castiel behind the bar on her first day of work, his life had taken a turn for the better. Not only had he now somebody to talk, but also, as Meg called it, a BFF. When she had found out that Castiel liked playing the piano, Meg had started bringing him more notes, which she now kept hidden in her locker. The fact that the lock did not really pose any difficulty for Castiel had annoyed her at first, but given Castiel’s peculiar situation, in the end she had only shrugged and dealt with it with the same attitude that allowed her to shrug off the fact that there was a man in the bar whom nobody else could see. 

Once Meg had figured that, in fact, nobody else could see the disheveled guy in the trench coat, she had brought an old tablet along and they had looked up anything they could find on ghosts, invisible people and whatever else their extensive carousing of the internet brought up. The result had been that they now knew that Castiel probably wasn’t a ghost, even though he could choose to pass through things. There was nothing on anybody getting killed at the bar either. What made everything way more difficult was the fact that Castiel had no memories of where he had been before he had shown up at the bar, or even how he had got there. Or how long he had been there exactly. Before Meg, nobody had ever seen him, and his memories were fuzzy. Another mystery was how he knew how to play the piano, when he had no memory of learning to play either. While Meg still had the occasional bout of let’s-try-to-find-out, Castiel had resigned himself to his fate of what-the-heck-ever.

Meg had left him her old tablet and nowadays Castiel spent most of his days reading and watching stuff online, but during the evenings he preferred observing the people at the bar. Watching Meg mix another cocktail, Castiel silently wished he could at least do something useful. He realised that a cocktail apparently mixing itself would probably stir up some attention, and in the long run that might not be the best for his continued existence, even though recently he had started to wonder what the point of his existence was, exactly. When he had mentioned those thoughts to Meg, she had hit his incorporeal form over the head, which had been surprisingly unpleasant. Apparently, he could touch things and people, if he consciously chose to, but people could not touch him. Another oddity of his condition. He wasn’t sure _why_ he was weary about “showing” himself to other people, though. There was just a nagging feeling in the back of his head that it was a bad idea to get the bar a reputation of being genuinely haunted. Although, from a business point of view, having thin air mix the cocktails would probably be one hell of a selling point. 

Not doing anything useful, however, was just _so boring_. Sure, watching people in a sense never got old, and _hell_ were there interesting to weird to downright completely balloony people to watch at the bar as the night went on. According to Meg, _Purgatory_ was not exactly a dive, but it certainly wasn’t high-end either. It just perched rather precariously, and astoundingly un-metaphorically, on the border between heaven and hell. Apparently, the owner had, with a satisfying amount of irony, given the bar its name when he had realised that the restaurant on its left was called _Celeste’s_ and the slightly dubious Scottish pub on its right _The King of Hell_. 

Standing in his corner at the back of the bar, Castiel had a good view of the bar, but nothing drew his attention. The patrons changed in a steady stream of pursued and achieved drunkenness and it was only when a tall looking man plunked down on a recently vacated bar stool and gave the men to his left and right such a dark glare of impending doom that they decided to seek solace in their whiskeys elsewhere, that Castiel found himself unwillingly intrigued. The bar stools, amazingly enough, continued in their unoccupied state despite the bar being full, and when after half an hour nobody had been brave enough to claim either of the two glaringly empty stools, Castiel delightedly decided that he might as well enjoy an evening in front of the bar for once. 

Mr. Grumpy, as Castiel had started calling the man in his head, had claimed the three seats at the far end of the bar, next to the exit. When Meg frowned at Castiel for shoving past her to get to the other side, he motioned excitedly at the empty seats. Meg rolled her eyes, but didn't say anything. Experience had shown over and over again that it made her look looney - and some of the drunk guys just couldn't get it out of their head that she was talking to them. So communication with Castiel was mostly reduced to subtle gestures and eye rolls in the presence of others. Silently Castiel acknowledged to himself that Meg was _probably_ right rolling her eyes at him; feeling this giddy simply about having a stool at the bar on a buzzing Friday night might just indicate a rather sorry state of affairs in the rest of his life. He wouldn’t even be able to eat or drink anything, again that pesky matter of magically floating kitchenware, but he could at least pretend to be part of the crowd. Castiel sighed. Sorry state of affairs indeed. Still, he couldn’t help the wide grin from spreading over his face when he first ghost-slid through the bar and then ridiculous-Castiel-physics-sat down on the stool between the wall and Mr. Grumpy. 

There Castiel sat, ridiculously proud, beaming at Meg, who gave him a small apologetic smile for not being able to serve him anything. Not that Castiel could have paid, but that had never stopped Meg from sneaking him stuff before. Castiel didn’t need to eat or drink, nor did he need to use the facilities if he did, but he liked to taste. Sometimes stuff tasted weird, or of nothing, but hamburgers, he had found out, were pretty good. He had no idea if they were supposed to taste the way they tasted to him, but as he liked the taste, he didn’t much care apart for the fact that they made him very happy. Lost in musings about the randomness that governed his existence, it took Castiel a moment to realise that he was at the receiving end of one of Mr. Grumpy’s impressive death-glares. 

Castiel had not payed any attention to the man when he had shifted a little and turned to the wall; he had assumed Mr. Grumpy had simply taken to staring blankly at the wall. When Castiel turned around a little to better observe the bar from this newly discovered vantage point, however, he realised that Mr. Grumpy’s glare was very much focused on him. Which was… weird. Believing in a fluke, Castiel lifted his right hand and waved it in front of the man’s face. Which added a heavy frown to the already spectacular scowl.

“Dude, whatever you had to drink, you might wanna cut down on it,” Mr. Grumpy said. 

Castiel felt his eyes budge and only narrowly kept his jaw from dropping to the floor. What the hell…? He turned around. No, there was still only the wall behind him. There was no way the man was actually talking to him. He turned back to gape a bit more at the man. From close up he could see freckles and eyes that were startlingly green even in the smoky light of the bar. 

“You should probably refrain from maintaining your current rate of whiskey bottles per hour, pal, seeing as you’re talking to a wall,” Castiel said. 

“If you wanna pick a fight, be my guest, otherwise I suggest you make yourself scarce, _pal_ ,” Mr. Grumpy growled as his death glare grew impossibly darker. 

Now Castiel’s jaw really did drop. What the actual fuck…?! Years of going unseen and unheard had effectively stripped any concerns about what Castiel was only thinking and what he was saying out loud. 

“ _You heard that?_ ” he gaped.

Mr. Grumpy fully turned to him.

“That tends to happen when you shout stuff at people. Now, beat it.”

“ _You can ACTUALLY SEE ME?!”_

Mr. Grumpy’s grumpy face took on a distinctly annoyed expression.

“Listen, I don’t know if you think you’re funny, but I’ve had a pretty shitty day, so why don’t you just let me have my drink in peace!”

Castiel was by now all but vibrating out of his seat.

“You don’t understand, nobody can ever see me! Or hear me! I’m invisible!”

Carried away in his effort to make the man understand the gravity of what he was saying, he didn’t think twice about grabbing him.

Now Mr. Grumpy’s face shifted slightly from grumpy and annoyed to grumpy and wary. 

“Ok, pal, whatever you say, but you really might wanna stop drinking,” he said as he pried Castiel’s hand off his shoulder. Going by the guarded look that had entered his eyes, the man was obviously thinking he had a lunatic at his hands. 

Castiel could only stare at the man in front of him as he caught Meg’s eyes, motioned to Castiel, and shouted to cut him off. Meg dropped the shot glass she was holding. Meg being Meg, she did the opposite of what she had been told to do and brought two whiskeys which she put down in front of them. She looked from one to the other. 

“So,” she drawled, looking at Mr. Grumpy. “You can see him, can you?” 

“Is he saying he’s invisible again?” she winked at him. Meg had just bloody winked at Mr. Grumpy. “Clarence, you know you shouldn’t be fishing for compliments like this, it’s unbecoming and makes you look insecure.”

“My name is Castiel, not Clarence,” Castiel replied on auto-pilot before processing what Meg had said. When he did, he sputtered, “I’m not insec-… I’m not fishing for anything! Meg, tell him I’m invisible!”

Meg shared a pointed look with Mr. Grumpy. 

“See what I mean? And I’ve got to deal with this every evening. And he won’t ever stop until you tell him that there’s no way he’s invisible with how hot he looks bla bla bla.”

Mr. Grumpy chuckled. It was a rich, low chuckle, and Castiel gaped some more. 

“I see,” he grinned. “Well, thanks for the explanation, sweetheart.”

“Meg,” she flirted.

“Dean,” he winked.

 _What a nice name, Dean,_ Castiel thought. _Seems to fit him; he looks like a Dean._ Like a Dean who was flirting with his best - his only - friend. _But that is not the main point right now, is it, Castiel, will you_ please  _get a grip of yourself and…-_

“ _For the love of…_ Will you stop ignoring me? Can we go back to dealing with the fact that you can see me even though I’M INVISIBLE?!” Castiel sprang up from his seat.

Meg’s face split into a wide grin, Dean actually threw back his head and laughed out loud, and Castiel had to sit down again because his knees were suddenly wobbly. 

“Alright, alright,” Dean wheezed once he’d got some air back in his lungs, “that takes the cake. You’re hot, steaming hot, now will you please calm down again.”

He wiped a tear from his eyes and patted Castiel on the arm in an attempt to make him sit down again, unaware that Castiel was sitting again already. Dean’s hand slipped off Castiel’s arm and lands on his thigh instead, and Castiel was reminded rather forcefully of one of the few perks of being invisible, namely that hiding arousal was much easier when nobody could see you. Not that there had been many instances of arousal in the last ten years, but his points still stood rather nicely. As would other things very soon, if Dean didn’t remove his hand posthaste. Luckily, Dean apparently needed his right hand for his whiskey since his left hand was still occupied with removing the tears of laughter from his eyes. Castiel felt oddly bereft at the loss of the hand - it had been so long since he had felt somebody’s touch. And Dean’s touch had been very nice. So warm. So comfortable. Meg hugged him sometimes when he felt particularly low, but while her hugs warmed him inside as only the hug of a close friend can, Dean’s hand had felt like fire. 

 _Way to get carried away, Castiel,_ he chided himself. 

**Author's Note:**

> I also have a small art blog, delicirony.tumblr.com \- my art tag is #delicirony. If you’d like to have a look, you can find [my artsy stuff on AO3](http://archiveofourown.org/users/deliciousirony/pseuds/delicirony) too.


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